"Throw more strikes across the board in the bullpen," Epstein said during his season-ending news conference at Wrigley Field. "Partly a player-personnel thing but I think it goes beyond that a little bit because if you look at it -- and we have -- virtually every reliever that we have walked more guys this year on a rate basis, unintentional walk rate, than they did on average through their career. It was common. It could be a fluke, or it could be that there were certain situations where we tried to be too fine or certain situations where we didn't prioritize just getting a strike at the risk of some hard contact.

"We're openly looking at it, trying to figure a way to get better -- coaches, players. We're all trying to figure a way to get better because 30th in unintentional walk rate this year out of the pen, 26th the year before, come on, we have to be a lot better than that."

That should be encouraging to many of us here. Teams fielding good defense in particular should be willing to let the other team make contact.

Not sure if there are still financial ramifications in place from purchase of Cubs by Ricketts, but the lux tax threshold for 2018 is $197M. Have to figure there's some spending flex between 2017's $172 payroll and that lux cap, especially given how strong our core is and how significant our needs are in this offseason.

It's going to be interesting to see how Theo manages this offseason - it's a complicated one, to be sure. At what point, if any, do you try to extend any of Bryant, Russell, Baez, Contreras? Do you anticipate next year's FA class (Harper, Machado, Kershaw, etc.) and keep a few bucks stashed away? Can you land a starter of the needed quality for one of our MI types (Russell, Baez, Happ)?

Not sure if there are still financial ramifications in place from purchase of Cubs by Ricketts, but the lux tax threshold for 2018 is $197M. Have to figure there's some spending flex between 2017's $172 payroll and that lux cap, especially given how strong our core is and how significant our needs are in this offseason.

This is a details question. But I have a vague recall that there are expenses that count towards lux tax that go beyond "payroll"? Is that false? I just seem to recall the lux tax number being considerably higher than what I'd thought the actual payroll had been. Not sure whether that was health and benefits being counted in; or whether that was signing bonuses being prorated or something.

My vague point being, that if Jeff has Cubs current commitments at ~$120, and the lux line is $197, I'm not sure the Cubs really have ~$80 to spend without hitting the lux.

(If it's a matter of pro-rating, rather than benefits, then I suppose they might have >$80. If they give some big signing bonuses that get pro-rated, that might back-load. This is routine in NFL salary-cap management: a small 1st-year salary and a large signing bonus makes the first-year cap hit relatively modest.)